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It didn't take long for John Tripp to learn what was next for his German hockey team at the Olympics.

"I got a mass of e-mails," Tripp, 32, wrote in an e-mail exchange with theWhig-Standardyesterday.

That was the first the Kingston man knew Canada would be Germany's next opponent.

"It's going to be cool and the house will be packed," Tripp wrote.

"Every game (the stands are) full, but this one will be special."

Indeed, it's a dream scenario for Tripp -- playing Canada in Canada before a thunderous crowd at 7:30 tonight at Canada Hockey Place.

A professional in Germany (homeland of his maternal grandparents) since 2004, Tripp has played Canada twice at the world championship -- a 10-1 loss in 2008 in Halifax and a 3-2 loss in 2007 in Russia -- but a loser-goes-home Olympic match on Canadian soil dwarfs those previous contests.

The Canadians (1-1-0-1) will be heavily favoured against Germany (0-3), despite Canada's troubles early in the tournament. Canada was forced into the qualification-round confrontation with Germany by a 5-3 loss to the United States on Sunday.

While Tripp knows few people will be picking the Germans to win, there are no sure things in a one-game showdown. Canada needed a shootout to beat Switzerland, similarly a hefty underdog, earlier in the tournament.

"Anything can happen in these games," Tripp wrote, "so it should be a blast."

It already has been a blast for Tripp, who has scored one of Germany's three goals in the tournament. Against Belarus on Saturday, he gobbled up a loose puck in the slot and fired it home to cut his team's deficit to 3-2. Belarus went on to win the game 5-3.

"Every time he gets out there, tears come," said Rosie Tripp, John's mother, who is in Vancouver with her husband, Bill. "The goal he scored the other night, it was beautiful. He was bound and bent that the puck was going to go in.

"We were right there watching it come toward the net," Rosie added yesterday while enjoying a bus tour through Vancouver. "It was just like it went in in slow motion."

John Tripp also had the chance to march with German athletes at the opening ceremony last Friday at B.C. Place. While there, he met up with a fellow Kingston native, Jayna Heff o rd, a star for the Canadian women's hockey team.

When both Hefford and Tripp were nine years old, they were teammates -- and even linemates for most of the season -- on a Kingston Township rep travelling team.

Tripp and Hefford gathered up Canadian hockey forward Gillian Apps, who also has Kingston roots, for a snapshot.

"Waiting in the tunnel for your country to be called and then walking out to 50,000 people was pretty cool," Tripp wrote. "Our outfits were pretty funny and extremely hot."

"We won't see the closing (ceremony), so I'm pretty happy I got to participate in (the opening ceremony)."

Cheering on her son and his German teammates tonight will be Rosie Tripp, a proud Canadian and an even prouder mother.

"It doesn't get any better," she said. "I don't even want to say anything to jinx it. I just hope it's good hockey.

"We just found out (yesterday) morning on television when they said it was Germany playing Canada. We just said, 'Oh, wow.'"